This invention relates in general to the straightening and checking of automobile bodies, for example, vehicle bodies which have undergone damage from an accident.
More precisely, the invention relates to interchangeable apparatus for establishing certain specific reference points for repairing such a damaged automobile body, for example, the support points of the upper ends of front shock absorbers of the MacPherson type, and to correcting vehicle damage and bringing such reference points back to the original specifications.
Presently, location of such reference points is effected after the vehicle body has been placed on a support bench, and measuring instruments or the like are fitted to the bench to verify whether coincidence exists between the real position of the checked points, and the theoretical position indicated by the specifications supplied by each vehicle manufacturer.
Those verification operations, however, are not very practical to execute. When a deformation or deviation exists, even a slight one, it is frequently necessary to disassemble some structural support portions of the damaged body in order to be able to check the location of such reference points and to effect localized straightening of the vehicle body with apparatuses designed for that purpose. Thereafter, those structural support portions of the body must again be put back into their previous position in order to check whether the straightening which has been performed is satisfactory. Such operations thus require a long period of time. That is why the present invention has as its purpose to perform such operations more easily, and to effect localized straightening without any need to take apart the fixed structural supports of the body in the area of the deformed part.
In addition, the present invention comprises one or several individual control heads which function to define fixed specific points of a automobile body to be corrected or checked on a control bench, all of which utilize a common base structure. The common base comprises a hollow column secured to or formed with a solid fastening plate. The base includes a fixed guiding sleeve, inside which may be mounted a sliding rod, interchangeable in any base, carrying a control head member having a particular configuration suitable to serve as a fixing support or positioning control of a specific point of an automobile body.
Thus, it is possible to measure the dimensional coordinates of parts of an automobile body on a repair or checking bench by using several of those devices, some of them functioning to hold or fix the damaged automobile body in place on said bench, while the others control or reform the damaged portions. The whole of the devices thus used constitutes a repair installation.